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Link Homes, part of the Link Group of social enterprises, has been successful in its bid to administer the Scottish Government’s Help to Buy (Scotland) Affordable New Build and Smaller Developers Schemes across various areas throughout Scotland.

Help to Buy (Scotland) is part of a range of home ownership assistance from the Scottish Government which helps people access funding of up to 15% of the purchase price of a new build home.

The Scottish Government has announced that a further £100 million will be invested over two financial years (2019/20 and 2020/21) allowing it to be extended beyond March 2019. This will help up to 4000 households purchase a new-build home without the need for a large deposit.

Link had administered the scheme in various areas until March 2018 and will now provide the service in the following areas from 1 April 2018:

Edinburgh; East Lothian; Midlothian; West Lothian; Scottish Borders; Fife; Angus; Clackmannanshire; Dundee; Falkirk; Perth and Kinross; Stirling; Glasgow; East Renfrewshire; Renfrewshire; East and West Dunbartonshire; Inverclyde; North and South Lanarkshire; North, South and East Ayrshire; Argyll and Bute; Dumfries and Galloway; Orkney; and the Western Isles.

In 2016/17, Link helped over 2,000 people to buy their own home, contributing to Help to Buy sales, with a total of £55.9 million of Scottish Government.

A recent purchaser, Mr Leslie from Edinburgh, said:

“With no prior knowledge of buying a property, it has been a smooth and informative process with no issues. Link have been great in keeping us up to date and approachable if we needed them.”

Link Group Chief Executive Craig Sanderson said:

“Link will help the Scottish Government achieve its target 50,000 new affordable homes by building more than 3,200 new homes during the next five years. Seventy-three per cent of them will be for social rent.

“Customer satisfaction with Link’s delivery of the Help to Buy scheme is second to none due to the high quality, experienced team delivering around 85% of the Help to Buy transactions in Scotland.”

Link also works with a range of housing advice providers to ensure that affordable home ownership options such as Help to Buy, LIFT Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity are part of the package of advice to those considering their options.